Where's the beef?: Snyder teacher breeds agricultural literacy

Ronald W. Erdrich/Reporter-News
Dalton Toland slides off a mechanical bull as Riley Jenkins moves it back and forth by hand Tuesday during the Snyder FFA Fall Festival at Snyder High School. Although the FFA doesn't have anything to do with bull riding, the mechanical bull was brought by a chapter member's father to provide a bit of entertainment for the evening.

Abilene Reporter-News

SNYDER — There's just something funny about those Chick-fil-A commercials and it's no joke. Snyder High School agriculture teacher Richard Wilson calls it ag illiteracy.

"That's my No. 1 example. All the time, when I show it to (my students), I ask them, 'What doesn't make sense about this?' " he said. "I've been doing it for three years and I have yet to have a kid tell me, 'Oh, that's a dairy cow.' "

If you think a cow's a cow, you're not alone. Apparently Madison Avenue advertising executives believe the same thing.

"That cow is used for dairy production, not meat," Wilson said. "It doesn't make sense to have a dairy cow promoting that you should eat more chicken."

It's sort of like putting Roger Staubach on a bucking horse. Just because he played for the Cowboys doesn't mean it would end well.

Along the same line of thought, Wilson said misconceptions about agriculture are the biggest things he has to overcome.

"I teach a food science class and I have kiddos who think chocolate milk genuinely comes from brown cows," he said.

A lot of people don't know where their food comes from. And as the United States moved from an agrarian to an urban-based society, the problem has become more widespread.

But that might be changing. Many urban kids are learning more about agriculture.

In fact, most of Wilson's students are not from farm families.

"A lot of our kids are city-based kids, they don't have a lot of agricultural background or knowledge," he said. "Truth be told, a lot of them take it just because they get put in here."

But there is a lot more happening in agriculture than just farming. Wilson said he and teaching partner Lance Wann teach courses on leadership and public speaking.

"We try to hook them in that way and then slowly introduce them to farming and ranching and things like that," he said. "We've got about 120 kids that come through our doors every day in ag class but I bet about a hundred of them have no connection at all to anything agricultural."

Life skills are on the curriculum as well. Wilson teaches a course called Professional Development in Agriculture. Among the lessons are tying a necktie and the proper way to shake someone's hand.

"I had two girls this year that have never shook a man's hand or anybody's hand," he said.

What's a good handshake? Wilson tells his students to have a firm grip, look the other person squarely in the eye and offer a greeting.

"I tell them that if you make one bad impression, it takes 15 additional good impressions to erase it," he said.

No death grips, though. The sight of pain in the other party's eyes is not considered a greeting.

"I like to tell my kids, you don't ever want to go in for the kill. Go in, try to make those thumbs lock, and give a good, stern shake," he said. "It's just the smallest things that kids aren't learning at home these days."

On Tuesday evening, the Snyder chapter of the FFA held its fall festival in the ag building. The event was primarily geared toward younger children to introduce them and their parents to the organization and to learn more about agriculture education.

Wilson said the Snyder FFA, like other chapters around the state, is starting to prepare for the stock show season.

Clancey Gruben, a sophomore at Snyder High and the president of the local FFA, said the biggest thing he has learned through the organization is how to work together.

"You're not always going to get along with everybody, but you're going to learn to tolerate them," he said. "That's a big thing because that's going to be all throughout your life, whether it's in the workplace or at school; you can't gripe at somebody just because you don't like them."

Kellie Sellers, 16, secretary of the Snyder FFA, said the organization has helped her with self-confidence.

"When I first started high school I was the shyest kid ever, and now I'm not like that at all," she said. "When we go to our leadership camp, they really try to teach you how to come out of your box and be less shy."

Clancey started with FFA when he was in eighth grade. He said the first few years that he raised livestock he had to learn how to deal with the loss of his animals.

"It was really, really hard to keep from getting attached to them. Whenever they put them on the truck or took them to the sale and I finally said goodbye to them, I was curling up in a ball, weeping," he said.

But as he got older, he said, he developed a sort of "shell" about the process.

"Growing up is a big part of it, too," he said. "Just realizing that this is going to happen, it's the circle of life."